LIFE OF QIN, DAY TO DAY LIFE DOODLES

Going by Qin, she doodles every day events and keeps them documented on her Tumblr and Instagram. Her humour and light outlook on life is evident in her illustrations where she titles it, ‘Life of Qin’. What we really wanted to share was how she documents interesting happenings in her life in the form of doodles and shares it with the world. To us, it’s more meaningful than taking snaps of random things and sharing it just to get attention and likes. Moreover, her love for cats goes a long way. She sells merchandises of her illustrations in which an amount of the sale goes to cat organisations. We caught up with her and found out what made her doodle her life.

// Hi Qin, what’s your story?

Q: Hello, my name is Qin. It’s short for Nur ‘Aishiqin. I am a graphic designer, embroiderer and a doodler. I live in the west side of Singapore with my husband and 4 cats.

// Tell Us About “Life of Qin”?

Q: Actually Life of Qin (#lifeofqin) started a long time ago when I was still in art school (shout out to Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts aka NAFA). Sort of like little brain farts. However, those doodles that you see in #lifeofqin are basically happenings inside my brain. I didn’t even realize that I needed to pen it down.

I started off writing short stories on scrap notebooks. Those stories were funny, emotional or scary stories that happened in my life. I didn’t want to have a ‘Diary’ or an official ‘Journal’ because to me, those stories were not secrets. I wanted people to read it but couldn’t find an outlet to publish them. So, you could say that I am a short stories writer with bad grammar (shout out to my grammar nazis Celine and Halimi – both of them would always check my write up for me, even this one and yes I need two people to vet my document, don’t judge).

// Life of Qin

Q: It was only when I became an official Multimedia Designer in a corporate firm that I decided to doodle my life and start posting them on Instagram. I was browsing through Tumblr and saw some life comics being drawn by everyday people like me and they were good! Then I thought, why not try and give it a go. So I drew one stable character, which is myself. Make it as close as possible to how I look like in real life. This is how my 1st ever official #lifeofqin comic looked like, dated on 22nd February 2013.

From then on, my drawings didn’t stop. It just kept on going one after another to this day. I love how my comics bring joy to my readers and they can relate to the same events that I am going through.

// A Message For Readers

Q: One message for my readers is to ‘Be Confident and Be Kind’. It is a really simple message but it means a lot. Be confident of who you are, what you do for a living and what you want to achieve for the future. Because if you are not confident of yourself and everything about you, who else can go on living your life except yourself. So, no matter what you do or where you come from, just keep your head up and Be Confident.

Next is mighty important, Be Kind. The world is a very brutal place, cut throat environment in almost all workplaces. So, it is very important to be kind to the people around you. If you are kind and humble to everybody, things will go your way effortlessly. However, remember to make it clear that your kindness is not a sign of weakness.

I would like my readers to know that I appreciate them very much and thank them for their continuous support by reading my little brain farts. I would also want them to not be afraid to express themselves and their feelings. Laugh at your past mistakes and pai seh (silly) moments. Comedy is everywhere, even when the situation seems tense.

Read on for some facts about Qin!

Qin

30 years young. About halfway to getting my CPF (I hope) // Aquarius. I love showers and large bodies of clean clear waters.

Ideal Career // Commissioned home-based artist/ illustrator. Because I love staying at home being a cat mom to my 4 kitties. I love cooking for my family on my own time and going to the wet market with my mom. Yeah basically, being a total Singaporean aunty. The best thing is being able to create art and illustrate peacefully from the comfort of my own home for my clients. I create better when I am not desk bound.

Creative Approach // To create what your heart wants to create. Don’t create art because people want you to. Only then, will you value and cherish your hard work.

Fact // Well, I guess I want people to know that my comics and merchandises are genuine and sincere. They are not created just so that I can get more followers on Instagram and Tumblr. As you can see, I have only about 100 followers in Instagram and about 200 followers in Tumblr. I just love and am grateful that people actually acknowledge my work enough to follow and support me.

For my merchandises, I do not over charge. Even if the price seems slightly pricy. It is because part of the money will go to a cat organisation; example my #lifeofqin Volume One comic book set, $5 from every sale will go to Cat Welfare Society. Also, not forgetting independent community cat caregivers who are in need of money to fund an injured community cat vet bills. I believe giving back does well to the soul.

FUSSY // I am FUSSY about computer desktops. If there are too many files on a desktop I’ll go nuts. Everything needs to be in a folder, where the projects are in their respective folders. And they must be numbered, titled correctly according to the project’s title and dated.